The application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to government, industry and society at large is one of the most transformational developments of our time. For any nation, the upside of AI will be a function of its domestic capacity to produce and consume AI, balanced with policies that enumerate and enforce the responsible use of intelligent and autonomous systems. It will also be critical to stay mindful of the environmental impact of “AI Factories” reshaping every industry to ensure they adopt sustainable approaches to data science, data center design and computing.

Despite the many benefits of AI, they are not evenly distributed. Consider that out of 193 members of the United Nations, only 31 have a supercomputer ranked in the Top 500. This means 80% of the world’s governments do not have the domestic AI compute capacity to develop and train a large-scale AI model within their borders. Instead, they must import, consume, and ultimately pay royalties for foreign-developed AI models. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) refers to this issue as the "compute divide" and established a taskforce in 2021 to address it.

One of the newest and most intriguing paradigms for governments to understand is the metaverse. For starters, the metaverse is a concept, not a place. No one company can build or own the metaverse. It is better to think of the metaverse as the capability to build a "virtual world." In the future, there will be millions upon millions of virtual worlds, built for different purposes. Some will be consumer oriented. Some will be corporate. Some will be industrial. Some will be classified. Some will be private, but many will be connected.

Some virtual worlds will be powered by advanced technologies that simulate light, matter, general physics, and human intelligence. Running on supercomputers, these virtual worlds will have virtually no limitations, functioning as physics-accurate digital twins that can model and record the world– including how people, machines and nature behave and interact. They can do so with such fidelity, in fact, that it becomes possible to study the past and predict the future. This introduces the possibility for time travel.

In sum, AI is no longer just a simple policy matter. It enables the new industries and jobs of the future, as well as new paradigms in every field from national disaster management to clinical medicine, creating a new basis for global competition and domestic quality of life. Ultimately, investing in both the relevant human ecosystems and compute infrastructure that makes AI possible will be a key factor in the calculus for economic growth and resilience.

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